Mozambique is a semi-monist country, meaning that international law does nor always need to be translated into national law to be applicable. Depending on the legal nature of the act of ratification of an international treaty and its subsequent publication, the treaty could be directly incorporated into national law. According to the provisions of the Constitution, by ratifying a treaty and publishing it the Government Gazette (Boletim da República), Mozambique assumes a legal obligation to implement the rights recognized in the treaty and – as states by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to which Mozambique is a signatory – it must comply with the obligations of the treaty in good faith.

Article 18(1) of the Constitution sets out that “[t]reaties and international agreements, validly approved and ratified, are enforceable in the legal system of Mozambique immediately after their publication and as long as they are internationally binding to Mozambique”. Additionally, Article 18(2) of the Constitution establishes that “[t]he norms of international law shall have the same force in the Mozambican legal order as have infra-constitutional legislative acts of the Assembly of the Republic and the Government, according to the respective manner in which they are received” – meaning that the act adopted to ratify a convention or a treaty will define the legal nature of the provisions contained in the treaty itself.